Unfortunately the test for the composition of the polar plumes of Enceladus is failed. Something has gone wrong really to the passage of the Cassini though the Enceladus plumes at south pole. Next date for Cassini flyby on Enceladus south pole is for August.

Hi Michael, well found again! It seems be gone in this way. In fact other instruments of Cassini it seems have worked fine in the same moment.Somehow this problem has remembered me a similar occurred to the Galileo probe during its closer flyby on the plumes of a volcano (I now don't remember what) of the moon Io years ago.Probably (maybe) only coincidences.

Hi Eres,thx for bringing this up - as it made me wonder immediately when I came across it ...

Eres wrote:Unfortunately the test for the composition of the polar plumes of Enceladus is failed. Something has gone wrong really to the passage of the Cassini though the Enceladus plumes at south pole. Next date for Cassini flyby on Enceladus south pole is for August.

If you now read the newscientist article you will find these telling lines (emphasis added):

...Another instrument, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), got a close-up look at the tiger stripes, although some analysis is still needed before any images are released. "We're looking for any kind of changes from the last flyby in 2005," says Neil Bowles of Oxford University, UK, a member of the CIRS team.

On that flyby, CIRS found hotspots coinciding with the tiger stripes. The source of this heat is still unknown.

If the heat source is powerful enough to melt a watery sea or ocean under Enceladus's ice crust, then electrical currents in that sea could affect magnetic fields near the moon.

During the 12 March flyby, Cassini's magnetometer found that the field of Saturn is bent around the plume...

I wonder whether those "electrical currents" shouldn´t be the cause rather than the "symptom".

Further I wonder about this unexplained "software hiccup" - preventing the spacecraft's Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) from transmitting data to the onboard computer. What if they simply couldn´t collect data because of an unexpected current in the plume? What if the computer - simply got an electric overload - or (as I don´t know how the CDA works exactly) - the collected sample was ionized and they couldn´t get any results because of that?!

Checked it up a bit now. Basically the CDA is a mass spectrometer working with a pulsed laser measuring the thickness of abresion by the incoming particles on a collector plate. If - still holding the benefit of doubt - if those particles are too large or their acceleration is much, much more higher (due to extreme, not before expected currents) than previousely calculated - there will be simply no results showing up.

Perhaps our own team of Sherlock Holmes could find out WHY AT ALL "a new software, designed to improve the ability of CDA to count particle hits" had to be designed - in addition to the original mission.

FS3 wrote:Checked it up a bit now. Basically the CDA is a mass spectrometer working with a pulsed laser measuring the thickness of abresion by the incoming particles on a collector plate. If - still holding the benefit of doubt - if those particles are too large or their acceleration is much, much more higher (due to extreme, not before expected currents) than previousely calculated - there will be simply no results showing up.Perhaps our own team of Sherlock Holmes could find out WHY AT ALL "a new software, designed to improve the ability of CDA to count particle hits" had to be designed - in addition to the original mission.FS3

Very interesting considerations, I agree with you related to the problem occurred to Cassini.After all a problem of electric nature can easily influence the electronic part therefore on the software, it is a thing of which we have experience on our pc It's the same thing that I was thinking when I have written that the problem could be the same to happened to the probe Galileo on Io flyby.There are not for now enough tests to say it, but that happened exactly to the CDA instruments of the Cassini is a fact that must attentively be checked.

Abstract The Cassini-Huygens Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) is intended to provide direct observations of dust grains with masses between 10^−19 and 10^−9 kg in interplanetary space and in the jovian and saturnian systems, to investigate their physical, chemical and dynamical properties as functions of the distances to the Sun, to Jupiter and to Saturn and its satellites and rings, to study their interaction with the saturnian rings, satellites and magnetosphere. Chemical composition of interplanetary meteoroids will be compared with asteroidal and cometary dust, as well as with Saturn dust, ejecta from rings and satellites. Ring and satellites phenomena which might be effects of meteoroid impacts will be compared with the interplanetary dust environment. Electrical charges of particulate matter in the magnetosphere and its consequences will be studied, e.g. the effects of the ambient plasma and the magnetic field on the trajectories of dust particles as well as fragmentation of particles due to electrostatic disruption. The investigation will be performed with an instrument that measures the mass, composition, electric charge, speed, and flight direction of individual dust particles. It is a highly reliable and versatile instrument with a mass sensitivity 10^6 times higher than that of the Pioneer 10 and 11 dust detectors which measured dust in the saturnian system. The Cosmic Dust Analyzer has significant inheritance from former space instrumentation developed for the VEGA, Giotto, Galileo, and Ulysses missions. It will reliably measure impacts from as low as 1 impact per month up to 10^4 impacts per second. The instrument weighs 17 kg and consumes 12 W, the integrated time-of-flight mass spectrometer has a mass resolution of up to 50. The nominal data transmission rate is 524 bits/s and varies between 50 and 4192 bps.

So, if they did calculate that 10^4/sec would be sufficient and effectively got plenty more - the instrument would simply show NO DATA. That would be an alternative to the "overload"-hypothesis, as it was stated that all other instruments were performing well

Hi FS3, certainly, this is another better possibility to explain the problem occurred to the CDA instrument. Also considering that it looks like the other instruments were working fine. It has not evidently been well estimate by mainstream scientists, the energetic range and the nature probably not only mechanical of these plumes (jets)

A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet," said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system.

A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet," said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system.

I'm amazed that they don't at least acknowledge the EU theory when they say things like this.

No joke! Granted, they don't "know" the EU theory on the subject, most likely...

Now, here's a potentially silly question: Does common result necessarily stem from common cause?

IE, the chemical composition of the exhaust of very "different" (classically speaking) bodies is very similar. Can one imply common cause from that, or is it possible that completely different processes lead to the same end result?

It would be "nice" and "tidy" if common results could be pinned back to the same result (IE, electrical machining or sputtering from the surface of a body via St. Elmo's fire, or cathodic arcs, etc.)... But, is it necessarily so? I think the commonalities bear further investigation.

It's interesting that the EU model isn't as surprised at the findings that much the same things are found in both regions. Whereas the standard model kind of goes, "huh?"

So, the question does come up... Where do "comets" fit in the grand scheme of things? Are they the "dirty snowball" or "icy dirtball" of legend? Or are they simply a hunk of rock undergoing some stress or another (we say electrical) that causes it to sputter off bits of its surface? Enceladus is a rather large hunk that's spewing comet-like stuff at a small part of its surface. The Centaurs are asteroids, a few of which sport comas. Comets are much more brilliant displays with tails, shining in x-rays, etc. etc.

Could it be that these are simply examples of objects decreasing in size and increasing in charge imbalance / electrical load with their surroundings? Just a point to ponder...

Cheers,~Michael Gmirkin

"The purpose of science is to investigate the unexplained, not to explain the uninvestigated." ~Dr. Stephen Rorke"For every PhD there is an equal and oppositePhD." ~Gibson's law

Occam's Razor lives.As recently as a year ago I was saying things to my students like, "Every time they discover something new in the solar system, it's something new." After becoming immersed in EU, I'm finding myself saying, "Everything they find something new... wait... that's just what EU predicts!" I don't know whether the de-mystifying of astronomy is making me sad, or whether actually understanding (almost immediately) new discoveries in astronomy from the standpoint of EU is eroding my humility... oops, based on that last statement, I guess the humility factor has taken the biggest hit. EU is literally electrifying my mind! What a cometary! Misspelled pun intended. OK, so electric currents are found everywhere in the universe at every scale, hence asteroids act like comets act like planets act like comets act like stars, act like galactic discharges, reminding of us comets... Go, Occam!

Truth extends beyond the border of self-limiting science. Free discourse among opposing viewpoints draws the open-minded away from the darkness of inevitable bias and nearer to the light of universal reality.

"A completely unexpected surprise is that the chemistry of Enceladus, what's coming out from inside, resembles that of a comet," said Hunter Waite, principal investigator for the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer at the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio. "To have primordial material coming out from inside a Saturn moon raises many questions on the formation of the Saturn system."

Maybe not so much because a comet and Enceladus are made of the same thing but possibly because their "plumes" are caused by the same thing?